True conservatives value one thing over any thing else: societal stability.
WTF Is that?
He’s making an argument about tactics. I think that misses the point.
The issue that should concern conservatives is that the Tea Party movement is a populist movement. And populist movements are inherently unconservative.
When liberalism reigns, conservatism is revolutionary and stability is not the highest priority. The “status quo” as conservative dictionary-definition was debunked a long time ago.
The foremost conservative government in the history of the world — the American government — was instituted by revolution. Conservatism is not only about stability.
SnakeDoc
I think this “social stability” stuff is a caricature of wise conservatism. Often earthly shake-ups are good and necessary when we are concerned with conserving or restoring timeless good. Chaos for chaos’s sake is a lefty thing.
As soon as I read the coined phrase “Wal-Mart Hippies” I knew this thing was nothing I’d be interested in.
ML/NJ
FTA: ““The Rules For Radicals” was designed as a guide for the left to use to tear down civil society and build up something utopian in its place. It tactics are not applicable to those of us who value a stable, civil, and prosperous nation.”
My reading of Alinsy’s Rules is that it is about attacking organizational cohesiveness. As such it seems totally appropriate to turn their tactics back on them to achieve that effect and thereby advance conservative candidates. Stability and civility = RINO, IMO. Prosperity results from economic freedom and choice which is certainly not the status quo.
“True conservatives value one thing over any thing else: societal stability.”
BS.
The USSR has “societal stability” at the cost of liberty and individual rights. “True” conservatives are not slaves to the state.
This piece has the ring of a thinking hard lefty trying to analyse the conservative movement when he really has no understanding of conservatism.
Having read this tripe I can understand why this guy idolizes David Brooks.
When ‘stability’ equates to maintaining the ‘State’, and its massive bureaucracy; and being ‘radical’ means supporting and advocating the US Constitution — then ‘radical’ it is...
The guy thinks conservatism means "lie back and enjoy it".
No. Sorry. He misunderstands the nature of American conservatism, which is not mere traditionalism and does not make a fetish of stability.
We're constitutionalists. The founders were revolutionaries who bought our system at the point of a gun. We believe in liberty, and we're not going to let the Obamists have their way just in the name of civil stability.
Liberty upturns applecarts on all sides just by its very nature. Constitutionalism defends your right to build and create and prosper or fail, which sets the stage for the most dynamic society on the face of the earth. Its the marxists who want to sink the earth into a feudal stasis, not us. Its the marxists who fear liberty and all the messiness that comes with it. Not us, thats the sea we swim in.
Well, David Brooks and John Feeherty could have saved themselves a lot of verbiage and not looked so totally foolish if they realized the “tea partiers” they speak of who are NOT conservative are the RonPaul et al lie-bertarians who have infiltrated and claimed the TPs for themselves and who are running in congressional and gubernatorial races as Republicans.
Anyone can look at this site and see what the lie-bertarians are up to: http://www.rlc.org/
There also is an area on Free Republic called the RLC Liberty Caucus, which bothers some posters.
Got their start as Red Diaper doper babies. Indoctrinated in Marxist ideals and the calls for revolution by their parents, instructors, and "comrades".
Those who come to conservativism probably point to one individual here or there who got them on the path (and then led them to more reading, etc).
The dominant media has browbeat the public for decades that to be "politically correct" is to be liberal. Anything else is satirized and demonized and wholly misrepresented. Even historical accounts are revised to serve the movement.
Thats funny, when you consider that the most dangerous thing he does is to roll the tape and let us hear them speak with their own words coming out of their own mouths.
“True Conservatives” by this guy’s definition would have loved Mussolini.
When you have a Kenyan Muslim Communist in charge, determined to destroy the country with the help of corrupt idiots like Pelosi and Reid, then that’s hardly the time to sit back on your sofa and think about Original Sin.
Yes, there is original sin. And there’s also actual sin. And there’s evil. And I’m sorry to say that evil people have taken over our country. Corrupt, greedy, power-drunk, heartless. The kind of people who like to kill babies and smile while they do it.
The term “conservative” in our country usually applies to individuals that believe the constitution should be followed as written and do not believe it is a living document unless the amendment process is followed.
But non-conservatives sometimes forget that that same constitution was written by revolutionaries. If the constitution has become ignored and irrelevant over time that revolutionary spirit will return. The term Tea Partier fits that feeling very well.
A civil society does not pass on trillions of dollars of debt to children not yet born.
A civil society does not force its citizens into an inferior health care system while providing the political class with a superior system just for themselves.
A civil society does not seek to destroy law-abiding businesses with destructive regulations and fees to battle an imaginary crisis.
A civil society does not confiscate the wealth of the nation and dole out the spoils out to its political comrades.
A marxist society is NOT a civil society.
And to compare the Tea Party to the radicals of the sixties is idiotic in the extreme. How many inner cities have the Tea Partiers burned down? How many cops have they killed? How many soldiers have they spit on? How many god-awful folk singers have they unleashed?